


Babble On

by Likerealpeopledo



Category: The Mindy Project
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-19
Updated: 2015-08-02
Packaged: 2018-03-08 06:41:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 9,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3199304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Likerealpeopledo/pseuds/Likerealpeopledo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Started this for the TMP Hiatus Fic Prompt-a-thon and since I ended up with a few prompts, I figured I'd post in one place.<br/>And maybe this will encourage me to do more drabble-like things when I'm blocked.  Selfish, selfish.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Closet Space

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alittlenutjob](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alittlenutjob/gifts), [evmlove](https://archiveofourown.org/users/evmlove/gifts), [GloriaGilbertPatch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GloriaGilbertPatch/gifts).



 

 CLOSET SPACE

When Mindy was single, on the nights she couldn't fall asleep, she would watch the city lights and the stars blend and swirl together, and try to guess which was which. On rare occasions, like tonight, when Danny had his own version of insomnia (most likely brought on by a restless and vocal sleeping partner) he would stroke her hair and help her make up stories about the people in the building across the street. “Third floor, second from the left,” Danny’s voice was low and gravelly, his Staten accent deeply pronounced, as sleep was far more tempting to him than his girlfriend.  Mindy admired his need for Sleeplessness Solidarity, despite his clear exhaustion.

“He is from the Midwest. She is from a state in the South, where they don't have winters. They met on the internet…but they slowly fell in love. They dated long distance for a little over six months, but after a few visits, and Skyping every night, and sleeping with their smart phones on their pillows, they knew had to start a life together.” Mindy reached up to outline Danny’s earlobe with her fingertip and he shivered at her touch. “So they chose to move to New York, the land of dreams,”

Danny interrupted, “I thought that was Hollywood.”

“This is my imaginary love story, Daniel, please butt out.” Mindy continued, “They’ve been in the city together for a few months now. She’s starting to notice little things about his personality that aren’t as previously advertised. He’s starting to isolate her, and he doesn’t always let her call home to her family. He sends her flowers for her birthday but throws away the gifts that her friends have sent her,”

“Geez, Mindy, this guy sounds like a psychopath. I think we need to move.”

She scooted closer to him, throwing her leg over his and resting her head against his chest. His heart beat steadily in her ear. “You’ve ruined my cautionary tale of internet love gone wrong.   Now we'll never know how it turns out--if she can discover his betrayal and return to her family---”

He dropped a kiss on the top of her head, “I’m so sleepy, Min. Can we file the restraining order against him in the morning?” Danny ran his hand down her back, lazily brushing over her hips and across her bottom. It had taken him more than a little awhile to learn how to sleep with Mindy right next to him, on top of him even, because he liked his space, and about ten other practical reasons, but he had told her that he was slowly growing accustomed to having her spread over him like ivy on a trellis.

“Hey Danny?”

“Mmm?” The space between his blinks was rapidly closing, his eyelashes hovering over his cheekbones for longer and longer intervals.  She was losing him. “Whazzup, Min?”

“I just want you to know that I think that you came exactly as advertised.”

“Huh?”

“Not like Imaginary Internet Guy. You’re exactly who I’d thought you’d be.”

“Thanks, Min.” He patted at her head and neck a little absently, impatient to finally give in to his own drowsiness.

“And if there is anything that I need, you’re always willing to at least think about it, right?”

Danny nodded, “Mmmhmmm.”

“You know I love my dresser, but I think I might need more…closet space.”

“I don’t have any more closets, Min. Everything is---“ Before she could argue, Danny’s breathing had grown deep and rhythmic, and he had traitorously fallen asleep without her. 

She sat up for a second, watching the rise and fall of his chest, and briefly considered poking him in the side to finish the conversation.  Instead, Mindy curled into his sleeping form and tumbled into her own version of slumber not long after.

Mindy woke to find the right side of their bed empty, the moon still shining through the double paned windows.

She wrapped herself in the fuzzy blanket Danny had bought for her, one that he’d gotten at the same shop as he’d bought her dresser, just because he thought she’d like it, that it might make his apartment seem more like home. She found him standing inside his closet, staring up at the row of dress shoes that lined the left hand side.

“I thought I was the one having trouble sleeping.” He jumped a little, clearly lost in his own thoughts, and Mindy wrapped her arms around his waist, resting her chin on his shoulder. “Maybe it’s time to come out of the closet, Danny?”

He turned, snaking his arms around her, and pulled her into his chest. “I was just thinking is all.”

“At 3 am? Amongst your myriad button down shirts?”

He shrugged.  “I woke up and I couldn’t get back to sleep.”

“Do you want me to make you an egg cream? It sounds disgusting, but your Mom gave me the recipe.” An egg cream was Annette Castellano’s cure for sleepless nights, and she knew that nothing soothed Danny’s various afflictions (grumpiness, worry, the common head cold) faster than something from his mother’s kitchen.

If she’d learned one thing in the past eight months, it was that she couldn’t push him to tell her things, even if he had no right to keep them from her. It was a balancing act, how far out to venture, how close she could get before he’d close back down, shut her out, shutter completely. She was getting better at it, after all this time, so she didn’t spook him, because she’d seen the easy way he could slip out, and not even under the cover of darkness. He could check out as easily as a library book, and she hated how hard it was to get him to return. “I’m good, Min, thanks.”

“No egg cream, which I get, because gross, but what are we doing in here?”

“I was just figuring…I was trying to figure a way that we could get you more space in here. You’re right, your clothes, they’re everywhere. I almost put on one of your, what do you call ‘em, blouses this morning because I got it mixed up with mine.”

“I sense the urgency now.” She nodded, seriously.  Although the picture of Danny in her bird print Tory Burch was sort of hilarious and perfect.  The color would be spectacular on him.

“I was thinking maybe—another rod? I can have Ray extend this wall out into the bedroom, I’d only lose a few square feet---“

She knew that she'd caused this sudden closet space crisis, but she also hadn't meant for it to result in a middle of the night Storage Summit.  “Can’t we play _Mike Brady: Architect_ tomorrow? You have procedures in the morning. This can wait.” She wanted to say, _I’m worried about you_ , but she knew that he'd deny an vulnerability. “I didn’t mean to stir up a hornet’s nest, I swear.”

“No, you’re right. You need the space.” He buried his face into the top of her hair, “Even though you said…I think that I’m still figuring out how to be what I advertised, sometimes.”

“I know.” Mindy nodded, her nose in the divot of his collarbone. It was warm there, and safe, and she wrapped them both in the blanket she had thrown around her shoulders. “That’s why I like you so much.”

"Let's get some shut eye, Mindy.  I'll call Ray in the morning."  He guided her back toward the bed, depositing her gently on her pillow. She watched Danny putter through the room as he finished his pre-bed rituals for the second time that evening and tried to imagine that he was one of the tenants of the building across the street, one of the strangers whose secrets she could read.

She tried to see him as a stranger, but, for some reason, all she could see was Danny: faithful, familiar, tired, trying. _Hers._


	2. Five Times Danny Tries to Propose and One Time He Does

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from evmlove---Five times Danny tries to propose, someone ruins it, and one time he does it successfully

I. The One that Morgan Ruins

Danny Castellano already knows that he’s a genius. He’s seen the test scores: numbers don’t lie. But when it comes to relationships, he’s come to terms with the fact that, on occasion, he has the emotional IQ of a parsnip. It doesn’t always bother him much, and it is usually pointed out to him before he notices it, but he knows that he can’t always solve his interpersonal issues on his own. He has to rely on the kindness of co-workers, instead of strangers (okay, sometimes strangers) in his case, and he knows that he is much better at helping others than he is at helping himself. Mindy’s been hinting around for an engagement ring for months, expecting it at every candle lit dinner and every horse drawn carriage ride (okay, there was one carriage ride, and he hated every second of it. He was embarrassed for himself and for the animal) and now he’ll hide her engagement ring in plain sight.

All it takes is one simple phone call to the hospital vending machine company, a pair of tweezers to insert a two carat diamond ring into a bag of Twizzlers, and the patience to wait out a hungry Mindy Lahiri. He knows her patterns, her routines, and the candy she’s drawn to after a c-section versus a hysterectomy and, damnit, this plan is genius, with a capital G. If Danny enjoyed telling people his business, he would have held a hospital wide staff meeting to proclaim himself the new Italian Prince of Romance (maybe something a little less flashy, but with no less panache) and allow people to ask him how he came to be such an incredibly brilliant thinker.

Danny waits for his future bride in the doctor’s lounge, trying to look casual, but there’s nothing casual about the amount of sweat pooling in his armpits and forehead, and he’s almost positive that he could burn through a wall with his mind, just by sheer force of will. He’s never known such pent up kinetic energy, racing heart and pounding blood, and in all the roaring of his circulatory system, he doesn’t hear the familiar beep of buttons being pressed on the vending machine behind him. He doesn’t register the _kathunk_ of the candy hitting the metal receptacle, or recognize the sound of knuckles crashing against the spring-loaded door to retrieve it. What he does hear, however, is the sound of someone choking.

Danny jumps off the sofa and whirls around to find Morgan, eyes bulging with surprise and lack of oxygen, hands at his own throat. “Oh my God, Morgan!” Danny acts before he thinks, applying firm thrusts to Morgan’s abdomen, and dislodging the obstruction enough to open his co-worker’s airway.

Morgan bends over, hands on his knees, panting, as tears stream down his face, “You saved my life, Dr. C. I can never repay you. Actually, I literally cannot pay you. But I will give you all my dogs. Okay, some of my dogs.”

Danny waves his hand, dismissively, his heart still beating at a rate that would normally require some kind of cardioversion, “No, buddy, I had to, the oath---“

The discarded red Twizzler wrapper, still full of licorice, and short one carefully inserted diamond engagement ring, catches Danny’s eye just as Mindy enters the lounge, change jingling in her scrubs. “Oh God.”

Morgan isn’t the only one crying after that.

 

 

II. The One That Annette Tries To Ruin

Annette’s been dreading this day since the moment Danny burst into her kitchen wearing a woman’s purple fur lined parka, like he was auditioning for a remake of _Shaft_ , concerned about moving too fast and arbitrary proposal deadlines. She’s spent the months since worrying, fretting, pacing, and downright praying to the sweet Lord that something would eventually knock some sense into her eldest son. She had hoped that he’d finally realize that he needed to settle down with a nice Catholic girl from the Island—maybe even Jersey, and the loud Indian girl was just a fun distraction on his way to a sweet little Italian family. He was forty, for crying out loud, and starting to get that whole bachelor-for-life air about him, if he didn’t figure something out quickly. She just wasn’t thrilled with his options.

The second time he burst into her kitchen, before Christmas, looking for an engagement ring that she had long since hocked for cash, she knew that it was only going to get harder and harder to convince him that Mindy should be his In Case of Emergency, but not his Number One Girl.

And now, here he is again, with a huge grin and what she knows is her last chance to change his mind. “I’m doing it this weekend, Ma. I planned a huge surprise, I’ve got our friends involved to distract her, everyone will be there—“

“No.”

“What do you mean, no?”

“No, you can’t ask her to marry you.”

“Yeah, I’m going to ask her to marry me, Ma. I love her.”  He's getting impatient, and her window to convince him is slowly closing.  She needs something _big_ , something that prays on all his worst insecurities, on everything that she knows worries him.

“This is what she wants, Danny. First she lures you in with her exotic spicy cooking and her thick ankles—“

“What?”  His brow furrows.  Yep, the window is definitely closing.

“And then she takes you for everything you’ve got and you’re passed out in an ice bath in Hoboken with one kidney and a scar you can never get rid of.”

“What are you talking about, Ma?” Danny starts checking her vitals, like he suspects a stroke.

“It’s what her people DO, Danny.”

“What people? Doctors?”

“No, the ones from _over there_ ,” Annette whispers the last two words, as if she’s saying cursed words.

“Over there? You mean, Boston, where she’s from?”

She gasps.  Maybe more theatrically than necessary. “That’s _worse_.”

From the look on Danny's face, and that glint that's still in his eye, Annette realizes a little late that maybe those aren't Danny's worst fears, they're hers. 

__Oh well, at least their kids will be cute._ _

 

 

III. The One That Peter Ruins

 

The third time is not the charm.

The third time is the one where a drunken overgrown frat brother dressed as a gynecologist throws up on your intended because he is too drunk to open the correct front door.

The third time blows chunks.

 

 

IV. The One Beverly Ruins

 

It takes Danny upwards of three minutes to realize that it is he that Beverly is referring to as Dr. K., and that he’s the only person in the room with her. “Dr. K., I found a guy.”

“What?” Danny puts down his apple, creasing his newspaper on the article that he’s reading. “A guy? Did you lose a guy?” Stranger things, and all.

“I thought you wanted me to find you a diamond guy.”

After the unfortunate trip the first ring had taken through Morgan’s lower intestine, Danny had thought it would be best if a new ring found its way to Mindy’s finger. He wasn’t sure how he would explain any future odd smells that may emanate from it if he didn’t. “I did?” He can’t remember entrusting Beverly with any of this, or imagine a world in which he thought that would be a good idea, but desperate times call for Beverly, apparently. “Yes, I did?”

“Just give me the old one and I’ll make the switch.”

Against every ounce of better judgment, and probably several state parolee statutes, Danny hesitantly hands the ring box over to Beverly, and reminds himself to check on the ring’s insurance. “Don’t worry, Dr. K., I got you covered.”

A few hours later, Beverly knocks on Danny’s office door, hair wild and face covered in what appears to be mud. “Why buy the meat when you can get the cow for free?”

“That’s not the—wait, what?”

“I got the goods downstairs, Dr. K. The precious cargo.” Beverly wiggles her eyebrows, that tight line of her lips loosening in her impression of a smile.

He isn’t sure why Beverly would need to keep a diamond ring outside, but she is Beverly after all, and she makes Beverly type choices. She once came to work dressed as a witch, with full hat, straw broom, and a realistic-looking wart on her nose, which was all fine, but it was July. “I can’t wait to see it.”

“She’s a beaut. You’re gonna love her.” Beverly leads Danny out front, and gestures toward an immense brown and white spotted animal, forlornly tied to a parking meter. 

Sure, he’s lived in the city for his entire life, but Danny Castellano knows a bovine when he sees one, and that is a cow. A giant, breathing, zero carats, no clarity, non-engagement ring COW.

When the dagblasted thing emits a bored-sounding _Moo,_ Danny's not ashamed to admit that he visibly startles at the noise.

“Wait until you see the magic beans, Dr. K. We’re going to be rich!”

Danny sinks to the pavement, head in his hands.

 

 

V. The One Danny Ruins, On His Own

 

The old ring, recovered, freshly polished and disinfected repeatedly, for safety (not to mention sanitary reasons) is nestled in the pocket of his sport coat. Danny can’t pretend he isn’t nervous, but he will deny to his dying day that he accidentally kissed the valet as he handed over the keys to his car.

Mindy looks beautiful, her hair long and wavy, her lips a perfect shade of red. She looks like a movie star, or someone’s famous mistress, and Danny isn’t sure that he deserves her, or even that he doesn’t look out of place next to her. Maybe he’s too short, too Italian, too set in his ways to be her husband. They don’t look like the cake toppers in the wedding magazines she’s been leaving around the apartment, in her own obvious hinting way, and on paper, they certainly don’t seem like the perfect match. 

It's too much.  Too many differences.  Too many ways it can go wrong.  Again.

“Birth control to Major Tom, come in Major Tom.” Mindy makes a walkie-talkie static noise, jolting Danny back into the present.

“It’s ground control.” He says, clearly distracted.

“It was a joke.” Mindy shifts her gaze to the cutlery, and he knows that he's upset her. She might have been upset since they arrived, he’d have no way of knowing, because he’s been fully focused on Proposal Part Five, and wondering if he should take it all as a sign that he has no business marrying this woman. Maybe his first instinct, way back when on that subway car, was to never marry this woman, and it was actually correct. He isn’t accustomed to his first instinct every being correct.

“Okay.” He fiddles with the napkin on his lap, touches his jacket pocket where the ring box feels like he’s carrying heavy artillery. “Min, I need ask you something.”

She looks up at him, filled with wistfulness and hope and expectancy, and he’s alarmed to find his mouth unable to form words. “What, Danny?”

“Min, will….will you get me a doggy bag? I-I-I’ve gotta go.”

 

He doesn’t kiss the valet good-bye.

 

VI. The One He Gets Right

 

_Mindy,_

_I almost addressed this to Cliff, because when I write him letters it really seems to get results. And seeing as I’ve now made five (whether you realized it or not) attempts to get this proposal right, I’m starting to wonder if my tribulations aren’t some kind of cosmic interference. (Luckily for both us, I don't believe in all that stuff.)_

_I hope that you know by now that you make me the best version of myself. That wasn’t just something I made up to get into another guys’ pants (this is not going how I thought, so, that’s about right) but something that I know is true._

_Seven years ago, my whole life unraveled, and I spent all the time since then trying to figure out how to put it all back together. I think the problem I had, mostly, was that I could never quite pinpoint what the problem actually was. I wanted to blame Christina, the institution of marriage, my dad, that guy on the subway who looked at me funny, everyone. But I know now that a lot of it was just...well, me. I still don’t know exactly everything that I could have done differently, but I know a lot. You don’t spend seven years staring at the same patch of wall and not start to see the shapes. You can’t miss the patterns, and how things start to fall into place, and where you fit into it all._

__I keep thinking back to the misunderstanding we had about Peter’s apartment, and how sure you seemed that you would be okay no matter what happened with us. I was sure, too, but more sure that I would never be okay without you. And about the other thing you said: I’m not afraid anymore. I watched you get on a plane and fly away, and the most amazing thing happened. You came back. Not that I thought you wouldn’t, but some things you have to see for yourself. I promise you, Mindy, I saw it for myself._ _

_I know I don’t always have the right words, at the right times. I know that I tend to hold things in when I should let them out and let things out when I should hold them in. I make mistakes, every day, and wonder if today is the day that one of my mistakes is enough to finally take us down. But as mad as you get, and as stupid as I can be, you’re still here._

_You make me feel like new beginnings are possible, and that hasn't been easy for me to accept.  But that ends now.  Or it's already ended, and here's our fresh start._

_And in the spirit of fresh starts, and clean slates: Morgan ate your first engagement ring like he was a goat. My mother meddled. Beverly sold your second ring, in exchange for a cow and (possibly) magic beans. Peter got drunk. I pulled a Danny._

_We have never had an easy road, and I don’t expect that we will now, but I know that we’re going to have it together. We have to have it together. We need to have it together._

_I love you, Mindy, and I hope that if you've gotten this far, that I didn’t mess this one up, too._

_Look down._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Five times is a lot!


	3. Airplane Mode

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PROMPT:  
> Mindy had her phone on airplane mode during the flight home from LA, so the email to Cliff never actually got sent. What happens when she and Danny get back to New York and back to reality and there’s no Cliff, Morgan, or mariachi band to take the pressure off?

Danny has never embraced technology with any particular _joie de vivre._ He barely understands how to get through the lock screen on his smart phone to make a telephone call and while he's thinking about it, the ability to make a phone call is probably priority number one hundred and six for most smartphone users, because all everyone ever talks about doing on their phones has nothing whatsoever to do with dialing a phone number. He doesn't require a camera, or an app that tells him where to find fresh kale at 3 a.m., and he'd prefer that a guy with a file folder run out the door of the building every time he pushes _send_ on an email.  He doesn't even like the idea of having a phone - he's barely tolerated having a pager for the hospital all these years, but he knows that they are a necessary evil - and the idea that anyone, at any time, can reach him, wherever he is, whatever he is doing, well, he finds it intrusive on a level that he cannot abide. 

He looks over at his seat mate, the one whose lips were just all over his, her lipstick still rubbed on his neck and his jawbone, and could have been rubbed on other things if he could have performed acrobatic feats of mile high bathroom love.  Mindy's hair is an absolute disaster of a squirrel's hideaway and she smells a little like antiseptic toilet bowl cleaner; he has never wanted her more.  He reaches over to squeeze her hand, and she gives him a little smile, the kind that has always knocked him for a loop, even during staff meetings, and over complicated deliveries.  "Hey."

"Hey."  He also remembers being a hell of a lot more articulate, not even an hour ago, when he helped her write that letter, "Mindy."

She presses pause on her movie, focuses her full attention directly on him.  "What's up, Danny?"

"That letter---what are we going to do about--"  His nerves are collecting in his guts, and the idea that he's going to get off the plane and have to deal with something even more complicated than what is already right in front of him causes the nausea to intensify.

There she is again, with her smile, and he forgets to be nervous, just for thirty or forty seconds.  "Funny story!  I think I had my Surface in airplane mode, so..."

He has no idea what airplane mode is, if her equipment is going to fly off with tiny passengers, or gain a stewardess, and he almost doesn't want to ask.  He doesn't. "So..."

"So that email went nowhere, fast."

Danny releases a breath that he only recently started holding.

_God bless technology._

 

 

They ride the elevator up to her apartment, bantering about rock and roll lifestyles, and what he's going to have to get used to (correct answer:  everything) and the elevator Muzak plays Peter Gabriel's _In Your Eyes_ and Danny isn't sure, but he thinks that he might be having some sort of out of body experience.  Danny's holding the hand of a woman that he's had to bail out of more than one type of jail, that never stops hounding him about his clothes, his music, or his life choices, and that he cannot stop thinking about, even when he really, really wishes that he could.

He cannot pinpoint with ultimate accuracy the moment that his irritation with Mindy grew into admiration, but what he can pinpoint is his desire to not screw this up. 

She pours him a glass of water, because _I'm not Kurt Cobain, Mindy, I'm in my late thirties and I need to stay hydrated and so do you, after a long plane ride,_ and he sits on the edge of her couch, not sure where to put his eyes or his hands.  He's sure he's playing it off, though, until Mindy leans over and whispers into his ear,  "Danny, you can relax." 

He can't, but she doesn't have to know that.  He loosens his grip on his glass of water, and thinks about all the other places he'd like to put that hand, and how warm and soft Mindy's body felt, even wedged into that tiny space thirty thousand feet in the air. "I'm plenty relaxed,"  he says, setting down his glass, and finding his way back to her lips.  When he's kissing her, he's sure he's doing the right thing.  Any other time, he has room to question, and he doesn't really need the room right now. 

He needs Mindy.

Everything else they can figure out later.

He doesn't sleep with her that first night, but not because he doesn't want to, or because he doesn't want her.  They hadn't discussed it, or made it into something that they'd have to put in the practice's newsletter or explain to passersby, but it just seemed like they'd be better for it, if they could be a little patient.  Patient was not a word that was often used to describe either of them, but it seemed like for as different as they both were on paper, and in practice, maybe this was the thing that they could start off having in common. 

 

 


	4. Heart Shaped Box

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This started as a joke about waxing poetic about vaginas.  
> Then things got real.  
> Thanks to alittlenutjob, smapdi, gloriagilbertpatch, and tricerahops for the peer pressure.

If Danny had a dollar for every time he accidentally fell into a honey trap, especially after Mindy finally moved in, he could own far more expensive real estate in Tribeca.

"It's been a long time since you've written me any poetry, Danny."  She swirls one of his curls around her finger, her other hand on his bare chest.  She had been right all those months ago about strong and horny pregnant women, and he resides in a constant state of wonderment at the new and majestic shapes her body takes on, all the while housing and nurturing his unborn son.  It's almost too much to get a handle on, all at once, and he has to physically keep himself from pestering people on the street and describing it to them. 

"It's almost like once you knocked me up, you and my va-jay-jay were no longer thick as thieves." She is actually pouting about this, and he mentally calculates the proportion of ice cream to jewelry that he will need to atone for this sin of _not vagina friendly enough._    He'll have to add it to the list, but it probably ranks somewhere between _why didn't you tell me I had cankles now_ and _your sauce_ _gives me heartburn so why didn't you make it without tomato this time?_

“It’s a nice vagina, Mindy.”

“Nice? The vagina in which you deposited your seed is merely nice? Yeah, well, your penis is average. There, I said it.”  She folds her arms and glares at him, her eyes challenging him to give a rebuttal.

“That’s not what you said last night.”

“I lie in my sleep.”

“You weren’t asleep.”  He eyes her suspiciously, “Were you?”

“Of course not, not with all your pawing and groaning.”

“Now you’re just being mean.”

“You called my vagina nice.”

“Well, it’s never been especially cruel to me.”

“It’s going to start now.”

He rolls over, resting his head against her shoulder.

“How many vaginas do you think you’ve seen? Conservative estimate.” Mindy taps on his forehead with her index finger.

“Professionally or biblically?”

“Both.”

“As a doctor, thousands. Maybe in the lower five digits? I don’t know. I never really kept track that way.  You’ve seen quite a few yourself.”

“Don’t you turn this around on me to avoid the personal question.”

“You know how many women I’ve slept with, Mindy. Why do you want me to repeat it? God can hear us, you know.”

“You don’t think he noticed you nose deep in six—“

He pushes himself up so that he can clamp his lips over hers swiftly, “Are you trying to get me smote right now? I have a baby on the way.”

She gives him that look, the same one she gives him when he tells strangers "we're pregnant!" or when he suggests that she might want to try giving birth without an epidural, and Danny recognizes the imminent danger. “And it doesn’t matter how many I’ve seen or experienced,” he mimes air quotes around 'experienced', “This is the one that matters.”

“Mine.”

“Yours.”  He nods solemnly.  If it weren't utter and complete blasphemy, he'd worship at it, if he could.  Give alms, praise dancing, the whole nine yards.

“Ours.”  She pulls his face back toward her, gently kissing him.  He winds a path of tiny kisses down her neck, and shoulder, crossing her swollen belly, and down from her belly button.

He presses his face between her thighs, pretending to peer into her incredulously, as if he’s expecting a kaleidoscope of colors, or his unborn child to high five him. “A person is going to come out of here.”

“You know, I’ve seen it happen a million times, and I still manage to be awestruck by it sometimes.”  Mindy sounds too far away, and Danny slides back up, his chin on her pelvic bone. 

“It’s been going on for thousands of years, and it’s still both the hardest and the easiest thing in the world.”

She shoves at his shoulder. “Hey, I thought I was the easiest thing in the world. You’re the hardest.” She winks, and it is at once the most adorable and the dorkiest thing he's ever seen.

“You’re disturbed, you know that, right?” He smiles, though, because her disturbed is his gain, most of the time. “Women are so resilient.  I don't think I'll ever get over everything you guys go through, all the effort and the pain, and how you'll still be willing to do it again and again.”

She holds up a hand, "Let's be careful about the agains, mister.   I just hope that everything’s still the same down there after…”

“It’s going to be fine.”

“Nice, even.”  She teases. 

“Shut up.” He draws a _D_ and then an _M_   with his finger along the new dark line of skin that runs past her belly button, “You know that it will heal, and everything down there returns to business as usual in due time.”

“But will you still look at it the same after a tiny person tears through it ninja style?”

“Of course.” Because he knows that that tiny person is everything that he never knew he wanted, and it doesn't matter if the next parade of vaginas he sees belongs to the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition, none of them compare to any of this, “I'll look at it...better. It brought me my family, Min."  

"Our family."

"Our family," He corrects, "I can’t be mad at it.”

"I'm glad we had this talk." 

“That’s MY vagina.”

She tugs on his hair, “This is getting weird, Danny.”


	5. Rope

The worst part is: sometimes he feels right. Sometimes he feels justified. Sometimes he feels like she’s the crazy one for wanting what she wants. His logic is just that: logical.  His logic has semi-transitive properties.  If Danny plus marriage equals divorce, then Danny plus Mindy plus marriage must be equivalent.

“You know, you left me once, too.” The air never really feels light anymore; it’s always weighted down by some unspoken grievance, some length of rope with which he cannot avoid hanging himself.

She looks up at him, surrounded by glaringly cheerful baby shower wrapping paper, and bags, and discarded tissue that she crumples as he speaks, “I never left you, Danny.”

It is beginning to seem that he’s frequently testing the tensile strength of their relationship, investigating how much harder he has to pull until everything splits in two, “You moved to California! You put an entire country between us and we barely even discussed it. If it weren’t for the baby…”

Mindy covers the sides of her more rounded and obviously pregnant belly, as if covering the ears of their unborn child, “You know what?  If it weren’t for the baby, would you even be here right now?”

“Of course I would be. I lo--” _I love you, I want you to have my children. You are carrying my son and there is no one else in the world I would rather do that with than you._ But that wasn't the question.

She raises her hand, “If you try to use that against me one more time, I---If I wasn’t pregnant, you never would have offered to move to San Francisco with me. We would have done long distance for what, a few months? A few years? And then what?”

“There is no then what, Mindy. It’s just now. We’re together now.”

“But you think we won’t be together later, Danny. You don’t want to marry me because you don’t have faith that this--"  She waves her hand between them,  "is going to work.”

“That’s not…”

“Then what is it?”

 _What if it’s me?_ He doesn’t say it out loud, but he recognizes the flash of shock that passes behind her eyes, and with it, the realization that she isn’t the reason he can’t imagine being married again.

“There’s more than one way to have a family, Mindy.”

“Don’t get progressive on me now, Castellano.” 

He gives her a half smile, and he can barely feel the muscles in his face moving.

Her voice emerges threadbare and worn, fraying with each word.  “You know something, Danny? We were so much better as friends. We knew each other better then. No one ever knew me as well as you did.” 

Danny's diaphragm contracts with each use of the past tense.  “What are you saying?”

Her tears are coming freely now, and she reaches out to touch his cheek, “ I don’t want us to hate each other, either. I don’t want that for him.”

“Mindy.” It occurs to him that as far as Mindy is concerned, he’s always been the same hollow chasm of deadbeat dads and post divorce cynicism, and she fell in love with him anyway. She took the chance that he might always be that way, and she came with him, for him, regardless.

“We’re always going to be connected. He connects us. I know you’re going to be a great father, Danny. I know you are.”

“And you’re…wait, what’s happening right now, Mindy?”  The danger of testing relationships is that one day, the shock will be too heavy of a load to bear.  One day, it won't recover.  It can't.

“Let’s just—you know, friends can have a baby together. Like you said, there’s more than one way to have a family. People do it all the time. Look at Ross and Rachel.”

Every nerve ending in his body is numb, frozen in disbelief and fear, “I don’t know who they are. I don’t want to know who they are. I just-- I want you. Us.  Our family."  Even the word _family_ is starting to feel like something impossible to unravel, too complicated and intricate and tangled to be likely. 

She trips over a package placed too close to the door, steadying herself with the knob, and Danny bridges the distance between them physically with three sharp strides, his hand on her elbow, attempting to steer her away from the exit. "You had me, Danny, you just didn’t know what to do with me."

"Why are you talking like this? Like I can’t even…like I can’t do anything to fix…I don’t even know what’s broken. Tell me what’s broken. I’ll fix it. I promise.  I promise."  

His heart races as she pulls out of his grasp, and her eyes, wet with tears, plead with him to let her go, "But what if it’s you, Danny?"


	6. Air America

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Waitagainwhatt prompted:  
> Rishi helped Danny to go to India and meet the Lahiris

Danny Castellano would be the first (okay, maybe not the first; definitely in the top five) to admit that he didn't always catch onto things when he should. 

He couldn't ever get that stupid _bunny ear, bunny ear_ rhyme to work for him when it came to tying his shoes in Kindergarten, and that same feeling of _I'm getting left behind_   just never really dissipated.

In middle school, it arrived as he realized that his head was pretty much destined to land at everyone elses' shoulders. 

He was sixteen before he concluded that he had left too much room for the Holy Spirit, and damnit, he needed to get laid.

His wife was naked in bed with a man that wasn't him, Holy Spirit nowhere to be found, before it occurred to him that his marriage might be in trouble; let alone that it was over.

A jet had to hit a bad pocket of air to first make him reach for his co-worker's hand; it took being a yawning void of (only half-healed) abandonment issues plus unfortunate air currents to propel him to kiss her a year later.

And even as Danny began to realize that his friend could be his girlfriend could be the mother of his child, he still didn't always understand what it all meant; or what it meant to her.

Only that it finally felt like he'd actually caught up.

* * *

 

"I fucked up."

"Yeah, bro, you really did.  Like you HAD 99 problems, but now you have, like, a thousand."  Rishi mimicked a bomb detonating, through the phone.

"Thanks, man, I appreciate your support."  Danny didn't want to guess out of those thousand problems exactly how many of them were directly in response to his admission that he didn't think he wanted to get married again. 

"You calling to see if I can turn back time?"  Okay, apparently Mindy wasn't the only Lahiri not fond of him in this moment. "I don't think it's a good idea if we're associated together.   Both Mindy and my 'rents are funding Lil Reezy's newest tour, and I can't afford any negative press.  You're the Suge Knight of this crew right now.  Bad for business."

"Please.  I want to fix this.  But I can't do it without your help."

Rishi was silent for a moment, though it felt like longer.  Danny'd been so anxious to call Rishi with his idea he'd had to redial his number six times; always missing one number, like those nightmares he'd have sometimes, "I don't know, man.  It's bad."

"I know it's bad.  But I--"  He could fill in that sentence in a myriad of ways, _I can't lose her; I love her; I don't know what I'm doing, but she makes me feel more whole than I've felt in a lot of years;_ instead, he said, "I need to make this right."

A long sigh blasted into Danny's ear, "Listen, I can't have my nephew growing up thinking that I could have saved his parents relationship way back when, but didn't, so I'm going to do this for you."  Dramatic pause, "But for a price."

"Anything. Name it." 

"You're dancing in the new video for _Ho, It Ain't Mine_."

"Sold."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	7. Maybe Next Christmas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danny takes Mindy home from the Christmas party that happened the year before Josh and Mindy’s, pre-show.
> 
> (I kept seeing the old gifsets on Tumblr--hence, the very holiday inappropriate setting.)

 “Danny, I’m gonna make you sooooo pregnant.” Mindy slurs against his neck, leaving a petite line of drool along his shirt collar.

Danny swipes at the dampness with the back of his hand while still attempting to keep his inebriated co-worker upright. From afar, he’s positive that it appears he’s roofied his latest victim, and has brought his rubber-limbed companion home for a night of debauchery. In reality, he’s fairly certain this night somehow ends with him holding Mindy’s hair as she up-ends the last vestiges of their office Christmas party into her toilet.

He’s exactly certain that no one will be getting pregnant.

“I’m not sure that’s how it works, Min.”

“Are you saying I’m shooting blanks? Huh?” She bucks against his grip, knocking him a little bit backward, and a lot off balance. It’s hard enough to get her up the steps without her getting belligerent. “I’ll show you!” She swerves, and Danny does a little two-step, which results in Mindy sliding down his body as if he’s a fireman’s pole, and wrapping her arms and legs around his ankles, koala style. Danny decides to let gravity win and topples over so they’re both sitting on the step.

Mindy gives him a forlorn look, her lip jutting out in a pout.

“Seriously? You’re getting your feelings hurt because I don’t believe that you can impregnate me?” He really has the science on his side in this argument, and he’s just drunk enough not to know how to impart that evidence to her. It’s already taking all his energy to get her into her apartment, and considering they’re sitting a third of the way up her front steps after ten minutes of trying, that energy is spent. “Trust me, you can’t.”

“I don’t trust you as far as I can throw you, you squatty little weirdo.” There she is, the Mindy he knows best.

Danny stands, wiping his palms on his knees, and reaches for Mindy’s hands again. “All right, old girl. Up you go.”

“Who’s old? I’m not old. You’re old!” Not her best work, if you ask him.

“Fine. Up you go, you very new zygote.” Danny heaves Mindy to her feet, grunting with the exertion. “Up the steps, Take Seventeen.” He wraps his arm around her in support again, and momentarily calculates his chances of ending up in a heap on the concrete below if he just sweeps her off her feet and carries her up to her door. He concludes Certain Death, and returns to his original plan: coaxing and slight physical cajoling.

The two manage to climb up three more steps, losing one shoe (hers) and patience (his), when Danny’s pants begin to vibrate. “Danny. You have magic hands.” Mindy moans, a little too realistically for his taste. “Mmmmmm…” He’s still going to have to look her in the eye tomorrow morning and in every staff meeting until he retires, so learning Mindy’s O face is going to have to wait. Indefinitely.

He finds his phone and swipes _Ignore_ swiftly, and Mindy groans. “I was so close, Danny! Boner killer.”

He rolls his eyes, hard enough that he wonders if he might have lost one. “Can we concentrate on the task at hand, please? Right foot, lift! Left foot, lift!” Danny taps on her knee cap, hoping the reflex will at least encourage forward momentum. Something has to, or else he’s going to have to sleep outside tonight.

“But when we get up there, we’re still gonna do it, right?”

“If by “it” you mean open the door? Yes.” _Staff meetings, Danny. Deliveries. The doctor’s lounge. The subway. Medical conferences. The breakroom. Are you prepared to never be comfortable in any of these locations again? This will not end well._ “We will definitely open the door.”

“We’re talking about a figurative door, right?” Mindy winks lasciviously, but considering she pronounces figurative without half of its consonants, it takes a little bit of the wind out of her flirting sails. “We’ll definitely open the 'door.'” She adds air quotes. “Door, door, door, door, door.”

“All right, when you say it that many times it sounds weird.” He’s distracted her enough with talking about imaginary sex doors that they’ve accomplished at least eight more steps, and Danny knows the finish line is near.

Mindy is warm against his side, and she slumps against him, her hair soft as it rubs the underside of his chin. He knows it’s the alcohol, and the fight about the lack of Rihanna on his party playlist, and all the adrenaline from having to haul his combative colleague halfway across town from her napping perch in the food donation box, but maybe he _should_ open the figurative door tonight.

It would only change everything about everything, but hey, maybe everything wasn’t going that great anyway, and hell, it wouldn’t kill him if he tried something new once in a while.

Clearly, she's totally into it. Granted, they were both pretty drunk, and she was sort of snoring---“Mindy! Wake up! We’re almost there! Door?” He shakes her, a little cruelly, and her head wobbles and droops, like a rag doll. Danny curses under his breath.

The good news is, with Mindy unconscious, he’s able to half-carry, half-drag her up the last two steps and open the actual door with the keys he fishes out of her handbag.

Maybe next Christmas.


	8. Looper

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An homage to Memento.  
> Amnesia! Mindy

 

 

 

 

Tomorrow, she thinks, she’ll remember.

 

Except there isn't ever a tomorrow, or every fifteen minutes (or any passing spurt of time—it can be all of five minutes, or on the high ends, three hours, or even thirty-six—it varies) is its own tomorrow, making her feel like time almost never passes at all.It’s refreshing, sometimes, the clean slate.She doesn’t have to worry about the fool she made of herself, or what someone thought of her, or to have to suffer the first impression anxiety she knows exists, because she remembers it from before.

 

Before her hippocampus decided _nope, we’ve had enough_ , she has memories.Memories:clear, present, Technicolor.School dances, pimples, and books she’d sneak beneath her comforter when she was supposed to be asleep.Slumber parties and prank phone calls and homecoming floats.She has a vivid memory of a dragon—not to scale—a costume she made for Halloween, before she realized that girls were supposed to wear fewer clothes, instead of more-- to trick or treat.Before she realized that she was the treat.

 

She carries college, and medical school.Her residency is as bright and luminous as the lipstick she applies daily.Her time at Shulman and Associates is burned precisely where it should be, on an infinite loop. Patients, colleagues, procedures: they bloom as they're planted.  


 

Those memories have an iron grasp in her head; she cannot loosen the vines as they climb the trellis of her axons and dendrites.They are implanted, innate.Her own.

 

It’s everything after that isn’t.

 

She’s seen photos.  Past Tense Mindy was always a copious historian of their shared life, the one with Danny that she accidentally left.Sometimes she goes through the Heartbreak Box she invented for times like these (well, not exactly like these, because really the heartbreak box was always more for forgetting than remembering) and it occurs to her that she’s met the human version of her Heartbreak Box, and he lives and breathes next to her in living color.

 

Someone has devised a system, a way to keep things neat, or as neat as they can be.She has a set of index cards, lined and neatly lettered in Danny’s most careful handwriting, detailing what she needs to know.

_You were in an accident._

_We’ve been dating for over a year.You were pregnant—there was an incident on the subway—your brain was badly injured and we couldn’t save the baby._

  
__

* * *

 

 

Danny’s face doesn’t change.The hopeful one, that falls.She watches it, every new start, and doesn’t know that she’s seen it before.  It's just that sometimes, from the lines near his mouth, she gets the sense that she has.

 

His hope is her dawn.She wakes to his eyes, waiting, searching, praying.Sometimes, once he surmises that the loop has restarted, his eyes will glisten a little, but he doesn’t ever cry.

 

Sometimes he hugs her, too tight.Bones scrape on bones, and she wants to pull away, but doesn’t.

 

He’s always there, in the next new space, by her side.

 

His hair changes, but she doesn’t notice.  More gray comes in, wiry and stolid near his temples.  She thinks it's always been like this.  His beard grows.  Sometimes she wonders how she fell in love with someone so gray, so covered. The beard scratches her neck when he kisses her, but she always allows it, even during those times when she doesn’t exactly know why.

 

They're just words on a card, words not even written in her own hand. She doesn’t have to believe them— _Danny loves you—_ but she does, unequivocally.

 

Sometimes, palm to clammy palm, Danny will say her name in this scraping, questioning way, like maybe this time someone new is living behind her eyes.

 

There is no one new.  It's just this Mindy, the one that has to be reminded to love him.

 

She asks sometimes for Tom, or Casey, or even Peter, and she sees how it deflates him, and for the next little while, she doesn’t ask again.She just lets him stroke her hair, or she'll ask him about his day.It’s easier then.

 

He tells her stories, but she has a sneaking suspicion he hasn’t really seen anyone other than her in longer than he cares to admit.

 

He tells her, every so often, about what happened to her, about the traumatic brain injury.  He's always gentle about her new limitations, but she can hear how the anger seeps into his silences.  He'll tell her about where she was going, how scared he was, all the ways that they've had to adjust. 

 

On good days, he'll even tell her how much they’ve saved even after everything that they lost.

 

* * *

 

“Danny?” (The darkness before the dawn.)Sunlight rises in his face.“Are we married?”

 

Danny shakes his head and she pretends to ignore the cloud that passes over his features.

 

“Did we want to be?”

 

He shakes his head again.“You did.”

 

“You didn’t?”

 

“I wanted…I was committed to you, Mindy.It was just marriage seemed…”

 

She has a note card, one that says _You’re in love with Danny, but he has baggage.You help him carry it._

  
“That sounds dumb.”

 

He smiles ruefully and she’s glad there’s an expiration date in her psyche for this conversation.“In retrospect—“ Danny trails off, his hands twisting lamely in his lap.

 

This day lasts the longest.Thirty-eight uninterrupted hours of total recall feels like a toehold in reality, a step toward perpetuity.

 

Until it disappears again.

 

* * *

 

Nothing else dims, is the thing.You’d think that as a memory dissipates, objects around it would muddy.But it never seems to.

 

It all stays vivid and headachy and loud, except for the last little while.

 

Mindy still knows Danny from before, and she knows that bits of him still cling to her synapses and neurons, the way her jersey knit dress clings to her curves.

 

And she knows that more than just bits of her cling to Danny.That what remains with him weighs him down, binds him to her side, and keeps him from moving on.

_Danny quit his job at the practice until you can get better._

 

 He runs his fingertips over her skin, lightly grazing, causing goosebumps to rise in their wake.

 

The pads of his fingers read her—her skin a journal entry, her moles and birth marks and scars the braille of unspoken words, unexplained feelings.

(It’s just that she has no idea what they say.)

 

Maybe he’ll unlock the secret of what restores her memory by glancing over the right stretch of skin, decoding the correct secret password that allows him access to the right portion of her brain.

 

Sometimes it feels like her skin is crying out  _It’s here!_ But his touch can never seem to arrive quickly enough.

 

Instead, she shivers.

 

_ Danny loves you.  Always. _

 

* * *

 

“Why are you so sad, Danny?”  She's seen so many of his smiles splinter, but Mindy just notices this one.  Now.

 

“I’m not.” He doesn't meet her eyes.

 

“You lie.” 

 

He sighs. “I just really miss you is all.”

 

“But I’m right here.”The cards are across the room, and she’s too tired to retrieve them.He’s too tired to explain. 

 

He swallows thickly, his eyelashes casting spidery shadows across his cheekbones in the narrow light.“Yep, you’re right there.”

 

* * *

 

Another sunrise, but the sky is blanketed with stars.

 

His fingers are intertwined with hers, and he’s quiet.He looks content.  The muscle in his jaw is still.

 

“Did we have a good day?”She asks, and he doesn’t turn his head to look at her.

 

“We did.”Sometimes his voice surprises her, with a huskiness that she’s not prepared for, one that doesn’t match his face.Tonight his tone is as soft as his lips, and the fine hairs at his wrist, where she’s currently stroking.

 

He pulls her closer, guiding her jaw to his, and she doesn’t need to read a card to know how much she likes kissing him this time.

 

There are days (hours, minutes, seconds) it feels like kissing a stranger, and that day is not today.Today she’s kissing Danny, and she doesn’t want to forget it.

 

(She forgets.)

 

“Do you think I’m ever going to get better?”

 

They’re in her childhood bedroom, because of one of the neurologists suggested a change of scenery, not really recognizing the irony in his statement. 

 

Danny doesn't answer.

 

(His hope is dangerous, and sharing it with her seems even more so.  He wants to tell her how he can't love her enough to put her back together, and he's terrified that she can't put herself back together enough to fully love him again.)

 

When the doctors suggest distance, she gazes out the window of her parent’s Concord living room to see the lawn lush, and to find Danny sitting in the middle of it, arms wrapped around his knees.He looks like he’s gazing out to sea, and not onto asphalt covered suburban streets.

He looks small, and lost.  She can't reach him.

 

Mindy doesn’t think that’s the distance that the doctors were referring to, but it feels far enough.

 

* * *

 

Mindy has nightmares about crowded spaces and can smell flesh burning, maybe hair—and it lives in her nostrils with pinpoint accuracy.

 

She’s alone when she wakes up, the sweat pinning her hair to her neck and forehead.Something is missing, but she doesn’t know what, other than some kind of phantom heat on her limbs that she can’t seem to manufacture on her own.

 

The next dawn, Danny is back.Maybe he’d always been there.

 

He squeezes her hand, leans his forehead against her temple, and sleeps.She counts his breaths into the thousands before she forgets what she’s counting.

 

But the cards are there, propped on the nightstand.  A beacon of cramped lettering and a life she'd like to live. 

 

She soothes herself with the cards, and the photographs nearby, and she's caught up again before he wakes.

 

He doesn't have to know she was even gone.

 

Danny doesn’t have to press the reset button himself, all the time.

_You help him carry it._

 

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt for Tuesday: The discussion that lead to Danny adding another rail for Mindy's dresses in his closet - or the discussion after he sees the doll's dress and she almost drills his pec. (alittlenutjob)


End file.
